


Liminal Spaces

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, in which barry goes to see his friends show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 21:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11388627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: Kid’s got a mind like a labyrinth and a blind spot the size of his sister.That’s the joke, see? Cause he doesn’t remember her. Got her scooped out of his brain with some sorta surgical precision, got the best parts of his life and the best people he’s ever known smoothed over, a blank space so slick he doesn’t even know it’s there.“I’m Taako,” he says. “You know, from TV?”Barry visits an old friend in between resurrections





	Liminal Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> don't ask me why i wrote this i dont know. lowkey wrote this in an hour in a fever dream.

Kid’s got a mind like a labyrinth and a blind spot the size of his sister. 

That’s the joke, see? Cause he doesn’t remember her. Got her scooped out of his brain with some sorta surgical precision, got the best parts of his life and the best people he’s ever known smoothed over, a blank space so slick he doesn’t even know it’s there. 

“I’m Taako,” he says. “You know, from TV?” 

You're at his show, invisible, floating above the crowd. He's flipping an omelette and flipping his hair, a bleach-blond cascade. He's smiling.

Everything about him reminds you of his sister (your lover, your best beloved, your _Lup_ ). That's uncharitable, though. He's his own fully realized person.

Guy's the closest thing you have to a brother.

He's sautéing chopped vegetables in a pan, adding spices, transmuting milk into butter and stirring that in. You can see the absences in his actions, the slots for a sous chef who would fit with perfect synchronization. Where Lup should be.

Not that Taako should be here, anyway. Why is he smiling at audiences? What did Lucretia erase?

He looks happy, you think. There's less tension in his shoulders. He struggles to cast anything harder than a first level spell — that's bullshit, you've seen the guy cast shapechange without a sweat. What was Lucretia thinking?

Lucretia is your family. You love her. You are so very afraid of her, and that's a trip and a half, being afraid of 'Cretia. 'Cretia who is one half of your "Normal humans club (no Magnus's allowed)," who encouraged you to talk to Lup about your feelings, who has saved your life a thousand times.

She's gonna kill you if she finds you. No, not kill. Destroy? You're not sure what the technical term for majorly fucking up liches is.

You look down at your bones, enrobed in red. You've spent too much time out of body. She'll find you, or one of the Raven Queen's emissaries will find you. It's been almost a week since you last wore flesh, since you last forgot.

You wonder where Magnus and Merle and Captain Davenport are. You wish you had the time to find them. Only reason you're here watching Taako preen in front of the audiences, is that Taako's name is everywhere, plastered on posters across Faerun. Seeing him is enough, you think, except it's not enough.

Sixty-something years ago the guy taught you how to swim. You hung out on the beach with him under clear purple skies and talked about your crush on his sister. Sometimes Lup would watch the two of you in the water and heckle you. Taako was uncharacteristically supportive. It was embarrassing at the time. You miss it. Was it sixty years ago? You don't know anymore. Lucretia would know.

When you've got a body, it's nice not remembering to be lonely.

Life is a relay race between your lich-self and your living-self. Life is following instructions that you pre-record on a magic coin. Life is recording instructions on your enchanted coin of echoes. Life is looking for Lup, no matter what sort of flesh you're wearing.

When you're alive, the stuff that you record sounds like somebody else's life. You're just Barry Bluejeans. You've finished your degree in necromancy and your Ph.D. in magitech-engineering four months ago. You woke up in a test tube. You woke up on a surgical table. You woke up in a cave with a broken magical artifact cracked in two beside you, your jeans and t-shirt neatly folded next to your body. S'like waking up from the weirdest hangover in the realm. The coin always crackles awake a couple moments after you wake up.

The coin tells you you're important. That you've got a mission. That you have a family out there and you're going to find them. That the love of your life is out there, somewhere, and that you need to find her, trust me Barry, I know we can't miss her right now, but she's the best thing that happened to us and she's in trouble, probably.

You feed yourself carefully calculated bits of information: a trail of breadcrumbs that keep you moving forward. It works. You know exactly how to push your buttons.

Taako is still talking. You should leave. It's been so long since you've seen your family, though. It's addictive, watching the guy swirl sauce and toss pasta with a snap of his fingers and a smile. It's good to see him enjoying himself. It makes you sick to your metaphorical stomach to see him missing so much of who he is. Did Lucretia do this to everyone?

You know the answer to that. You live the answer every time you die and wake up and scream with frustration because your living self didn't get any further in your mission, every time your living self hears about an obvious lead and doesn't follow up on it cause you can't fucking remember what it means.

Maybe you'll go see SIZZLE IT UP WITH TAAKO! while you're alive. Right now, you wrench your eyes from the stage and float away. Your new body should be ready by now. You've been wasting too much time. You gotta find Lup.

When you get to the cave you've stashed the person-size test-tube in, you breathe a sigh of relief. No one disturbed your stuff.

You fold your clothes neatly and put the coin on top of your shirt. You've added a couple of new messages to it. You add one more. "Hey, if you get a chance, go see Sizzle it up with Taako. Don't worry about doing anything, just go enjoy the show." Clicking the coin off, you place it on your shirt. You stare at your body. There you are. Your fleshy, living self. You wonder what would happen if you let it out without possessing it.

Sometimes it's hard to make the soul-body connection between your lich form and your physical body. It helps to think about strong emotions.

The night you and Lup played your duet and went and talked together and then went and _talked_ together. The joy and excitement of receiving your IPRE recruitment letter. The terror in your heart as you forgot Lup's face, her name, the way she laughed.

You sink into your flesh. You forget.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu at @[anonymousalchemist](http://anonymousalchemist.tumblr.com/) if ya wanna talk taz n fandom 
> 
> man! you ever think about just how much shit barry went through? that's a lot of shit! 
> 
> also hey tip me a kudos or a review if you liked this and feel like doing that! its the only way authors know what peeps think, no pressure tho, it'd be hypocritical of me to give ya pressure 
> 
> thanks for reading!


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